


Rotenburg

by Dusty_Forgotten



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Amputation, Assisted Suicide, Based on a True Story, Blood, Blood Loss, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, Branding, Burnplay, Burns, Butchery of the German language, Cannibalism, Carnivorous Animals, Consensual Violence, Consent, Decapitation, Dissection, Gore, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Real Events, Knifeplay, Light Bondage, Literal Bloodbath, M/M, Medical, Medical Jargon, Medical Malpractice, Organs, Past Attempted Suicide, Praise Kink, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Self-Harm, Smoking, Stitches, Surgery, Tragedy, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:34:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 7,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7543492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux smiles, gently, puts a cautious hand to Ben’s neck and tilts down enough to whisper in his ear, “I fully intend to slaughter and devour you.”</p><p>Immediately, Ben's pulse spikes. He wonders if Hux can feel it.</p><p>Either way, he pulls back, folds his hands behind him nonthreateningly. “If that’s alright with you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cannibalism

**Author's Note:**

> {Shows up eight days late with a case file} WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT GURO CHALLENGES!? 
> 
> This is heavily based off the case of Armin Meiwes, who killed and consumed a consenting victim in Rotenburg, Germany.
> 
> Tropes will be out of order, and a number omitted, to preserve contiguous plot.
> 
> Three years I've never kept an upload schedule, but this is going up daily, midnight Eastern Time. God have mercy.
> 
>  
> 
> [Gyöngyhajú lány by Omega](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlCEamC4Ts)

Ben worries his ticket stub as he scans the crowd. He’s in some airport with a name that doesn’t seem like a word, waiting alone for a man he’s never met, whose real name he doesn’t know— who flew him to Germany because they had one thing in common.

Ben wants to die, and the General wants to kill him.

Details aren’t nearly as important when the worst-case scenario is what you’re hoping for.

“Schön dich zu sehen!” startles him, and Ben’s stomach drops at the approaching middle-aged man. He brushes by, embraces an elderly woman. Ben lets out a breath.

“Hallo.”

Ben turns to see a man: pale, ginger, attractive, and smiling pleasantly. This can’t be his guy; the General’s German, and the man in front of him looks as Irish as they come. “Guten… tag?”

The smile breaks to bare his teeth. “Your accent is terrible. Guten tag, Kylo.”

Kylo Ren is his screen name, just like General (and some series of characters he doesn’t recall) is the alias for the man he’s speaking to. The General speaks English, he’d said, but they’d met on a German forum, so they mostly stuck to that.

“Yeah, two years high school German…” Quickly, he translates (however haltingly), “Zwei jahre deutsche…”

“Please stop, you’re embarrassing yourself,” the General replies laughingly, sounding really not all that German. “Most of my schooling was in England, so I’m probably more fluent in your language than you are in mine.”

“Probably… definitely,” Ben agrees. He can’t get over how  _ attractive _ he is: tall and slender, with pink lips and blue eyes and red hair, and his black coat buttoned up to the neck just makes all the colour stand out brighter. Ben finds it hard to imagine a man this pretty finds him at all appealing.

Ben finds that he’s torn his ticket stub, and he doesn’t have any luggage. Remembers why he’s here. “Uh, General…”

“Hux, please. You’ll get my attention much easier that way.”

“Hux,” he retries, “are you…” He bites his lip, facing a cocked brow. “Is this really happening?”

Hux smiles, gently, puts a cautious hand to Ben’s neck and tilts down enough to whisper in his ear, “I fully intend to slaughter and devour you.”

Immediately, Ben’s pulse spikes. He wonders if Hux can feel it.

Either way, he pulls back, folds his hands behind him nonthreateningly. “If that’s alright with you.”

Ben nods; his throat’s suddenly too dry to answer.


	2. Bones

Half the horror movies Ben’s seen start with the long drive up a winding dirt road, ending at an overlarge, centuries-old house on top of the hill— beautiful, but something sinister to it. The windows are too small, unevenly spaced, the siding crooked, or dying for repainting.

That is exactly where Hux lives. 

“Nice place,” Ben mumbles, automatically.

Hux groans. “It’s a mess. Too much for one person, but I wouldn’t know what else to do with it. I inherited the property when my father passed.”

“Sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t be,” Hux casts as he parks the car, “he was awful.”

The air’s cold in a German November; Ben never had a winter coat, living as far south as he did, and he supposes he won’t need one. It’s blessedly warm inside. Hux hangs Ben’s hoodie alongside his coat and leads him further in.

He’s smaller than he looked. Inches shorter than Ben, but waifish. His shirt’s high-collared and black, well-fitted and close at the cuff. Ben is fairly certain he could throw him over his shoulder.

It’s a comforting thought.

The living room— family room, den; wherever people gather— is rather millennial, with its sprawling entertainment centre and chesterfield sofa.

“Please, sit,” Hux speaks up as he disappears around a corner. Ben takes the middle cushion, and regrets leaving the ticket stub in the pocket of his hoodie. “Do you want anything?”

It’s too casual; too much pleasantry. Ben wishes Hux would bludgeon him already. He closes his eyes, hopes he’s coming up from behind. “No, thanks.”

There’s a shadowbox of military medals on the far wall: German, so Ben couldn’t guess what they’re for. There’s a hallway down the left— he thinks he sees stairs— and a neat row of off-white human skulls on a low shelf.

It occurs to Ben he may not be the first to donate his flesh to Hux.

“They’re not real.”

Ben startles; Hux had, in fact, snuck up behind him, with a half-full wine glass in one hand and a glass of icewater in the other. He offers the latter to Ben, and moves around the couch to the shelf Ben had been eyeing. “I’ve hardly touched the decor. It’s a little kitschy for me, but I’m told my apartment in Manchester didn’t look lived in…” He sets his glass on the shelf and picks up a particularly yellowed skull, uncapping the cranium and tilting it forward so Ben can see. “Ashtray.”

He cracks a smile, snorts a laugh. Hux takes his wine and sits on the edge of a recliner, almost across the room. “How are you feeling?”

Ben tenses a two-handed grip on his sweating glass. “I’m fine.”

“Drink that, would you?”

Ben frowns, tips his head back, and takes long gulps.

Hux sighs, “Not too quickly. You’re no good to me sick, Kylo.”

He drinks until ice bumps his nose and thumps the glass on the coffee table. “Are you ready?”

Hux’s eyebrows twitch together. “Eager, aren’t we?”

“I just want to get it over with.”

“Why, do you have to be somewhere?” Ben goes silent under the disapproving glare. Hux’s fingers tap the bottom of his wine glass, unconsciously. It’s the first idiosyncrasy he’s seen. “… I need you to understand something, Kylo. I don’t want to do this unless you want me to.”

Ben eyes Hux, slowly sipping his wine, and frowns. “Why do you care?”

Leisurely, he swallows. “It’s not just meat. It’s taking another person into you.” He swirls his wine, smiles. “Someone giving himself so completely…”

Despite the water still moisturizing his mouth, Ben thinks his saliva’s too thick to swallow.

“It’s not about me, Kylo,” Hux emphasizes. “It’s about you. Anything I can do for you…”

He withers under the gaze, darts his eyes. He’s not sure what to do with kindness.

Hux sips his wine, shrugs. “As long as I can have your corpse afterwards.”

Ben finds himself staring at the skulls again, into empty sockets, and imagines what Hux will do with his bones. It’s warm, but he still shivers.

Hux follows his eyes and says in a way that could be a joke if you wanted it to be, “I’m sure no one would notice one more.”

Ben smiles.


	3. Bruising

Hux finishes his wine, and leaves the glass on the end table as he comes to sit in the space at Ben’s left, tilted towards him and legs crossed properly at the ankle. “What do you want, Kylo?”

Ben looks down at his right hand, that’s always felt foreign. Thinks of how he first read Body Integrity Identity Disorder on a fetish forum. Broke his wrist three times, but it always came together.

“I want to see this damn hand come off.” He closes the fist, and frowns as it does. “If you just cut my hand off, I can die happy.”

“That simply?”

It’s almost easy to say, after knowing for so many years: “I want to die.”

A smirk quirks at the corner of Hux’s mouth. “That’s good, seeing as I want to kill you.” It’s not nearly as easy to hear— but Hux is leaning forward, and he’s gorgeous, and Ben thinks he may die right here. “I’d also like to kiss you, if you don’t mind.”

Ben’s lips part, even before he nods. Hux wets his lip, smiling, but it relaxes away once their lips meet. A gentle caress, like a first kiss at your date’s door. Hux’s hand is at the back of his neck again, and Ben distantly notices that Hux didn’t leave his gloves with his coat. It’s not important, when Hux’s tongue swipes at his lips, and Ben responds, always eager, for everything Hux could give him, pressing their open mouths together.

There’s movement, but his brain is too slow. Nothing else matters when Hux is kissing him.

Then Hux is straddling his lap, Ben’s face in his hands, and he’s breathing against his mouth, “How do you want to die?”

“Slow.” 

“It might hurt.”

“I want it to,” he urges, fingers curling against the leather cushions.

Hux is beautifully out of breath when he murmurs, “You can touch me.”

Ben wraps his arms around Hux’s narrow back and pulls him flush. His hips buck up, but it’s reflex. All he wants is Hux, however he can have him, closer than is humanly possible.

“Blood loss,” Hux declares, “it’s slow. I can hold you while you die.”

Ben’s sucking a bruise into his neck, but Hux hasn’t pushed him off. “Not painful enough.”

Hux tugs his top shirt buttons apart, wraps a hand up in Ben’s hair, and guides his face to the junction of his shoulder. “I can make it painful.”

When Ben bites down experimentally, Hux gasps. The freneticism dies as Hux strokes through his hair, shuddering, and mouths mildly at his neck. Ben doesn’t let go until he feels the give of breaking skin.

Hux pants, “Do you still want to?”

The bruise is already blooming purple, and Hux shudders when Ben nuzzles into it. “Absolutely.”


	4. Self-Harm

Hux dismounts, and beckons him down the hall. The skulls watch as they pass, ascend a narrow staircase, emerge into another hallway. The right is lined in windows, and the left, doors.

“Kylo.”

Hux stands there, looking devious and deadly. Ben could still throw him over his shoulder— he’s sure after getting his hands on him— but he suspects Hux could tear his throat out with his teeth.

“Do you want to see?” Hux asks, inclining his head to the door behind him.

He wants to see everything, from Hux’s face when he first wakes up, to his own insides. Ben nods.

Hux opens the door, and disappears inside.

It almost seems unfinished, but Ben quickly realizes the room’s completely stripped. Traces of wallpaper glue, uncovered subfloor, and ceiling studs exposed—

There a rope, looped over one of the joints, and a wood laminate table, with a knife block. Ben’s mouth is hanging open. There’s a cleaver hanging from the wall.

“I wasn’t joking,” Hux asserts.

Ben hasn’t slept in a week, staying up to four am in his timezone waiting for evening in Germany. Thousands of private messages with the General, baring their darkest secrets. Amputee Identity Disorder. Cannibalism. Assisted suicide.

“Neither was I,” he says.

Though it had been placating before, in the slaughter room, Hux’s hands behind his back just seem dangerous. He splays one on Ben’s chest and demurs, “Are you ready?”

He nods, to prevent himself from saying something idiotic.

Hux twists Ben’s shirt up in his fist and jerks him forward, closing those scant few centimetres. He bites Ben’s lip until he tastes blood— a taste of what’s to come.

“Follow me,” Hux orders, with a smudge of red on his lip, and Ben is helpless but to follow.

“This was my bedroom as a boy,” Hux explains as they enter. “I turned it into a guest room when I moved into the master.”

The walls are somewhere between grey and navy, empty but for one taxidermied deer head. There’s a door to what could be a closet, a bookshelf that seems to have been emptied only recently, and a full-size bed made with a grey paisley duvet. He wonders how much of the decor is from Hux’s childhood.

Hux sets the cleaver on the nightstand: he brought it with him. “May I see your hand?”

Ben doesn’t even flinch before offering the appendage. It doesn’t mean much to him.

Hux tugs at his sleeve, but it only goes up a couple inches before catching on the thickness of his brachioradialis. The corner of his mouth pushes out, like he can’t decide between a frown or a smile. “Would you mind removing this?”

Hesitation. Ben looks down at his sleeve, and supposes Hux is going to see it anyway, when he’s dead. He yanks his shirt over his head, revealing the three dozen-or-so erratic scars crawling up his forearms. Hux doesn’t flinch; he takes his left in hand, probes for the lay of the bones. It’s simultaneously clinical and hospitable. He turns the palm up, pauses, then drags his thumb up the long gouge running parallel and nestled between his radius and ulna. He doesn’t have feeling in the scar tissue, but Ben imagines it inflaming.

Hux does smile, that time. Ben doesn’t know what he expected. The man wants to cut him open; why would he be anything but impressed Ben has attempted the same?

Hux nips at his earlobe, holding him at the wrist while his thumb traces the scar, and asks, “What do you say we get this hand off?”


	5. Bondage & Burns

Peeling back the comforter, there’s an underpad protecting the sheets. “Have a seat,” Hux says, rolling his sleeves.

Ben lights down on the edge of the bed— high frame, but his feet touch the floor. Hux slides in beside him, slipping off his shoes, and Ben does the same. His socks are a ridiculous argyle, next to Ben’s black. Hux reaches back, to pat the centre of the bed, and Ben scoots into position, leans against the wooden headboard and twiddles his thumbs. He wonders if he’ll be as fidgety, when there’s less surface area to occupy. He wonders how long he’ll take to bleed to death.

Hux comes to rest beside him, legs crossed at the ankle. He offers his right hand, and Ben his left, and they clasp comfortably, with thumbs hooked together.

“Do you meditate?”

Ben’s surprised by the question. “Yeah,” he answers, “it’s been a while, but I did.”

“You should. The lower your heart rate, the better.”

Ben closes his eyes, breathes, and focuses on nothing but the ungloved hand in his. It’s cold, but his will warm it soon enough.

A sound rouses him— a scrape, a spark— a little flame dancing inches from Hux’s face, licking the end of his cigarette. Ben is more relaxed in the seconds watching that than minutes in meditation. Hux cuts the gas, and folds the lighter into his hand, taking the cigarette between two fingers. “Would you like one?”

He shakes his head, staring as smoke trails from the ember. Hux breathes in nicotine, and intently observes Ben’s singular focus. Sitting forward, he slips his hand out from Ben’s grasp, takes the lighter from his own, and flicks it alive. Ben’s gaze immediately snaps to that, and Hux takes a drag while he thinks.

The cigarette’s left on the lip of a bedside ashtray, and Hux is bracketing Ben’s thighs with his own. Ben’s nervous for a moment— only as long as the lighter’s out, and the natural light of the window behind him is waning to cast the blue-grey room in flaming orange— then there’s a fire in front of his face, and his pupils are wider under its light.

“This certainly isn’t helping your heart rate,” Hux muses, kills the flame, and kisses him. Ben sinks into it, Hux’s cold hands skimming up and down his chest. Ben remembers Hux’s allowance in the sitting room, and sets his hands on sharp hips. Hux has to tilt his head down to force Ben’s mouth off of his, even with one palm braced to his solar plexus. “Do you want me to burn you?”

He tries not to whimper, “Please.”

Hux holds the plastic reservoir between his teeth as he reaches for the nightstand; the bruise peeks over his collar as he stretches. He comes back with a length of black velcro, which he wraps snugly around Ben’s wrists. Ben doesn’t even consider disallowing it.

Then Hux slips into the loop of his bound arms, tied wrists settling in the small of his back, and Ben wouldn’t pull free if the house burned around them. What’s left of the light plays at Hux’s face: pale skin in pink and lilac. Ben has to wonder how a deathwish brought him something so wonderful.

Scrape, spark.

Hux licks into his mouth as he grips Ben’s trapezius. Bites his lip and crushes the heel of his palm to Ben’s clavicle as the gas valve snaps shut, and his chest is on _fire._

The velcro creaks, but it’s stronger than he thought. Hux grinds his pelvis down, plastic backing of the bed pad squeaking under his knees— and the pain leaves the instant the lighter leaves his skin. His lower lip pops against his teeth when Hux releases it, drops his forehead to the crook of Ben’s neck and rocks just a moment more. His breath splashes gooseflesh around the brand as they still.

Hux caresses the side of his neck, thumb parallel to the carotid. “… Your pulse is down.”

The velcro complains when Ben flexes his hands. “Are you ready now?”

A brush of lips on his neck, and one on his sternum, just above the brand. “Lay down. Let’s begin.”


	6. Amputation

Hux ducks out of his grasp, and Ben shuffles down until his head hits the mattress. His toes don’t hang off the edge. Hux leaves the bed to turn on an overhead lamp, brings a few items back with him; Ben stares at the ceiling.

He separates Ben’s wrists, setting the strap aside, and probes the bones again. “Your hands are enormous,” Hux mentions, grasping his forearm, and just below the bulge of his thumb.

Ben begins to drawl an unsure thanks that turns to a pained grunt when Hux dislocates his wrist. He manipulates the carpals to form a gap between the bones of his hand and those in his arm, and puts the palm flat to something wooden. Ben doesn’t look.

The sound of velcro, again. The same strap wrapping around his upper arm, pulled uncomfortably tight. Windlass, twisting until his fingers tingle. 

Hux’s cold hand lays over top of Ben’s, and then a thin strip of cool metal is resting in the fleshy channel between the bones.

“It’s not too late,” Hux contends, “I could still relocate your wrist.”

Ben turns his head to the side, Hux’s blue eyes appropriately impartial, nothing but meat between the metal and wood— it’s a cutting board. “Don’t you dare,” Ben replies. He looks at the ceiling again, so he won’t flinch.

He feels the fingers of Hux’s left hand lace with his own: then the cleaver comes down, and all he feels is agony. Ben doesn’t realize he was screaming until he’s panting and his throat is raw.

“Oh, Kylo…”

He manages to wrench his eyes open— he wants to  _ see _ — and there’s Hux, kissing the back of the severed hand still threaded with his. Ben admires the arterial splatter on his cheek, lifts what’s left of his arm to draw him closer.

Hux sets the hand aside, quickly squeezes a towel to the wound. “Good, keep that elevated.” He cranks the windlass a few more rotations, and checks under the already-soaked towel. Touches some part, and Ben hisses through his teeth. “Kylo, could you do something for me?”

“‘Course,” he concurs.

Hux reaches for his hand— the one still attached, resting over his stomach— and guides it to the open injury. “Pinch there.”

He does, on something spongy and throbbing— but everything throbs with the trauma. Hux works on it, but Ben doesn’t feel anything particular. There’s the tiniest flash off what’s most likely a needle, a wide loop made with Hux’s left hand; he’s having trouble keeping his eyes focused. His voice is hoarse when he queries, “What’re you doing?”

He glances up while one hand tugs. “Ligating your artery.”

“Why?” Why not let him bleed out on the bed pad, exsanguinated and ready for butcher?

Hux bows his head, and there’s a distinct snapping sensation where Ben pinches the end of his artery shut. When he comes up, there’s blood transferred on the pleased quirk of his lip. “You said you wanted slow.”


	7. Knives

Ben connects his moles, traces his veins, counts his scars (thirty-nine). Blood oozes down his arm, drips out from the towel, onto the underpad. He’s a little dizzy, even laying down, but he supposes that’s reasonable when you’ve lost a litre of blood. Hux told him to keep pressure, but he’s off dealing with a stack of blood-soaked towels. Ben peels the towel back for a peek.

The break is almost unnaturally straight, the exposed inside like every shock photo on the internet: generic meat. The ends of his bones— or, cartilage, probably— protrude when he moves certain ways, and he wouldn’t be able to identify his ulnar artery in the mess, if there weren’t a short tail of thread hanging from where Hux tied it off. He said the radial spasmed itself shut, so Ben has no hope of finding that. He reapplies the rag at a sound in the hardwood hallway, but it seems light, even for Hux. 

An orange tabby joins him on the bed. Well-fed, though poorly groomed: he’d think it a feral, if it weren’t in the house, sniffing shyly at the rolled towel containing his severed appendage. He offers his remaining hand, which the cat hisses at.

“Millicent,” Hux calls warningly from the doorway.

She snatches the hand before skittering for the exit, Hux narrowly missing a grab for her scruff as she dashes by. “ _ Millicent! _ ”

Hux looks positively furious, but Ben only shrugs, says, “She has more use for it than I do.”

Hux shakes his head at Ben, sighs, and closes the door. He slides into bed next to Ben, matching hands folded primly in his lap.

“I didn’t know you had a cat.”

“She’s hardly in. Good to see you’re alert.” He smirks just the smallest tic, and studies the brushed ceiling. He was so expressive in the airport, and now he hardly emotes at all. Ben imagines it was an act; he developed the same kind of false persona for his parents— except, the other way around. “… We could still take you to the hospital—”

“Hux,” Ben interrupts. He rests his stump on his stomach, and Hux doesn’t say anything about elevation. “You can keep asking, the answer’s not gonna change.”

He blinks, blankly. “You’re the fifth.”

Something cold settles in Ben’s gut— the thought four people have died in this house: that he’s only a number to Hux.

He goes on, “Two never showed up. One changed his mind, and we had a few glasses of wine before he went home. Another reneged and ran into the woods before I could offer to drive him to the airport.”

Ben wants to reach out, touch him as long as he’s allowed, but Hux is on the wrong side of him. “I want this, Hux.” He appears skeptical, so Ben suggests, “Show me how you’re gonna cut me apart.”

He’s amenable to that. Hux rolls, and reaches into a bottom drawer of the nightstand. When he comes back, he plants himself on Ben’s lap (where’s Ben’s beginning to think he belongs), and flicks open a linerlock pocketknife. Apparently he didn’t completely convert the guest room.

“Head comes off first,” Hux explains with a light swipe to his throat; he barely even feels it. “Hung by your ankles, wrists tied to the ceiling, so the blood drains.” He trails the blade down Ben’s left arm, until it bumps over the ridges of scar tissue on his forearm, teases, “Maybe not this wist.”

Hux tucks the blade back into the handle, and kisses Ben. He pulls back just enough to look him in the eyes, and he drags the knife from the space between his clavicles, over the aching burn, and down. He stops just at the top of Ben’s jeans, and how low they are…  “Bisect the body—” rakes his nails from collarbone to pelvis as he says this— “disembowel. Disarticulate the limbs, quarter the torso,” Ben resorts to those breathing exercises from anger management, because Hux has bitched at him about his beats per minute more than enough, “skin and butcher, like any animal.”

He bites his lip, settles on squeezing Hux’s thigh. “ _ God, _ I wish I could see that…”

Hux layers his hand over top, strokes soothingly for a moment, then stills in thought. He opens the knife, another beautiful click, and meets Ben’s eyes with a miniscule lift to his brow. Ben grins back, broad.


	8. Surgery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally I'd like to do a month's research for something like this, but our upload schedule doesn't really permit.

Hux wipes the blade of his old hunting knife with an alcohol prep pad, drops it in a pile with the others when it dries up. “Hold up this many fingers.” It takes Ben a moment to interpret, because they start from the thumb in Europe. He tries to hold up the three like Hux does, but it feels unusual, and he switches to the American way. “Do the same with…” Hux presses his lips together when he glances at the amputation site. “Add one more finger.”

He does, easily enough. “Hux, what are you doing?”

“Assessing for shock,” he says, with the back of his hand to Ben’s forehead. He doesn’t know what Hux is trying to accomplish; everything’s hot compared to his hands.

“... You’re gonna have to try harder than that.”

Hux smirks, subtly predatory, and presses the knife to the cleft of his abdominal muscles. He’s about to say something, but Ben’s biting his lip and nodding vigorously. Hux holds his gaze— right up until Ben’s eyes roll back, as he stabs the knife down. Ben lets out a harsh scream, arches with the pain, counterproductively driving the knife further. Hux smacks a hand to his chest, has to put most of his weight into it, just to hold him down. Pins his thigh under his knee, angles the blade up a little to retract some of the depth as he drags the knife down to his navel— jerks it through, and pulls out just before his pubic bone. He drops the knife on the underpad, cups Ben’s face and shushes until the screaming stops.

“Good,” Hux smiles, seemingly genuine, and presses a towel to the wound. “Sehr gut.” He peeks, like Ben did to his stump, spreads the flesh a little and inspects. “Already to the fat.”

He takes up the knife again, making short strokes through the adipose, but Ben already knows there aren’t nerve endings in it. He’s been that deep before. All that hurts is when Hux parts his rended skin to get to it, and that’s nothing after the initial cut. He sets the knife aside, more gently this time.

“Hold this,” Hux instructs, leading Ben’s hand to the towel and pressing it against his stinging skin. He keeps the pressure as Hux retrieves a crafting knife from the bedside table: a thinner, more delicate blade, close enough to a scalpel. He holds the cutting edge over his lighter (scrape,  _ spark _ ).

“This is going to hurt,” he warns, passing the knife back and forth through the fire. “You can have my belt to bite down on if you’d like, but I won’t mind if you scream, either. I own the property for miles.”

Ben’s voice is already a little rough, throat a little dry when he proposes, “Which do you want?”

The metal glows red, and Hux cuts the gas. “I’d like to hear you scream.”

The brand on Ben’s sternum pulses dully, and he can feel his fists clenching— both of them, even though he knows he only has one. His throat burns from his cries, even more so than the brand: but nothing burns like Hux’s knife.

“Good, Kylo,” he commends, “wonderful. We’re past the muscle, one more layer now…”

He gasps, hears himself sob, and convulses as the reheated blade slits him again. Hux has relocated to his thighs, at this point, to minimize the thrashing. “Almost through,” he assures at one point, but Ben hardly hears him.

When the knife lifts, he doesn’t notice at first, secondary to the excruciatingly ache of torn tissue— and Hux is speaking, but Ben’s not thinking.

“Oh, Kylo…”


	9. Organs

__

“Kylo?”

A hand comes to his cheek: small, but warm. Slick with his own blood. “Ren.”

Ben forces his eyes open, lets them fall on Hux. Hux is smiling, fondly— more than: affectionate in a way he’s not sure has ever been directed at him before. “Ren, look.”

Hux holds up his hand, a loop of small intestine dangling from his first two fingers. They’re a colour he’s never seen before— not pink or red, but some lovely in-between— smooth and slippery. Ben’s first thought upon seeing his own intestines, before his eyes, is that they’re sort of cute.

Ben smiles back, weakly, and Hux deposits the organ into his abdomen.

Hux curls his hand around the large intestine, follows it, from transverse to ascending, where it meets the small intestine, the pouch below. It’s a very strange sensation, because there is very little sensation; he can feel when Hux brushes the outer wall from the inside, and occasionally a deep, distant sort of ache when he moves certain organs, but for the most part, all he feels is the incision, a new flash of pain every time his wrist shifts against it.

“There’s your appendix,” Hux notes, right hand somewhere near the right side of Ben’s pelvis. “Do you have your gallbladder?”

“Yeah,” he chokes.

“Let’s see it.”

He draws almost entirely out, runs his palm over the coiled entrails, and loosely grasps the stomach. Ben feels immediately nauseous.

“Pancreas,” Hux narrates as he brushes it with his fingertips. Sweeps to his left, rotating his wrist to pass over the duodenum. “Liver…” Hux nudges at it, but it’s simply too large to be handled with one hand, and his other is occupied keeping the incision open. Ben lifts a shaking hand to curl into his own wound, pull his flesh aside and expose his innards. It hurts, but it’s worth it when Hux smiles at him before shifting the liver aside. Ben can hear the organs being moved (though he can’t see below Hux’s elbow) but all he feels is an odd sort of cramp far higher in his ribcage than he imagines Hux can reach.

“There it is,” Hux points out. “I wish you could see this, Ren.”

“So do I,” he admits with what little voice he has.

Hux’s face is impartial as he takes Ben by the wrist, guides it inside. “Careful with the colon,” he says, and it’s just as slippery as it looked. Ben’s fingertips touch something he’d liken to a half-filled water balloon, and it amazes him he can’t feel that. “Stomach. Haven’t eaten much recently, or we wouldn’t fit back here,” Hux explains, leading him to the posterior. “Pancreas.” There’s a definite change in texture; he thinks he could actually grasp this without breaking it— and Ben breaks most things.

“Here,” Hux urges. They’re under his ribs now, brushing them with the back of his hand, and he can feel them contracting with every exhale. “Do you feel that?”

Firm, almost rubbery, but slick and warm, like everything inside of him. Ben nods.

“That’s your spleen.” There’s a look in Hux’s eyes like he just might cry; Ben’s accepted that  _ he _ already is. “It filters your blood. Recycles red blood cells, stores white cells and platelets.” He releases his wrist, has to lean forward to get just a little deeper, and slots his slender fingers in the gaps between Ben’s. “This is as close to your heart as we’re going to get.”

Ben is up to his forearm in his own body, holding hands with a foreign man he met on the internet, who cut off his hand, and looks forward to consuming him after his death.

He’s never been happier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't get enough of bedroom laparotomies? Try Megsense's [I want to F*cking Tear You Apart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6698287/chapters/15319735).


	10. Stitches & Sickness

More than a little of his hair hanging in his face, blood and ichor caked up to his elbows, Hux sits in a stain on the bed pad from chopping Ben’s hand off, passing a needle back and forth through his tissue. Ben can’t recall the last time someone cared about him this much.

The needle is nothing, compared to the throbbing that’s overtaken most of Ben’s torso. It’s almost nice: the sharp rhythm of the sutures. Hux has the nicest hands.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asks instead.

He doesn’t pause, and doesn’t look up. “British Armed Forces. I’m a trained combat medic.”

As if Ben weren’t already worrisomely comfortable letting Hux cut him up, he  _ actually _ knows what he’s doing. But… Although Ben’s not fluent enough to be sure, he thinks Hux’s German pronunciation is fairly textbook. There’s an English accent in his English, but there’s some German there, too. He’s  _ German. _ “In Britain?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” Ben attests, “unless, that’s a way to say you don’t want to talk about it.”

Hux clenches his jaw, and goes quiet long enough Ben stows the subject. Hux leans forward, bites off the thread. The peritoneum lining, ligament, and fat are all done, so it’s just dermis.

“My father’s wife was not my mother,” Hux starts— on the story and another row of stitches, “he had an affair with a waitress and his wife never conceived. She loathed me. Shipped me off to an English boarding school as a boy, just to get rid of me. Found I quite liked it.” He tugs a suture shut; Ben watches fondly. “My father expected I would return at seventeen to join Bundeswehr, but I managed a compromise that allowed me to stay in England as long as I served the Armed Forces.”

“I tried to join the Marines once,” Ben divulges. He automatically fears he’s interrupted.

“Did you?” Hux questions, curiously.

“Yeah, back when…” When he still cared about making his parents proud. “They wouldn’t take me, ‘cause I had a suicide attempt on record… But, go on.”

“Well, I became a permanent resident. Would have happily lived the rest of my life there, if I hadn’t come into possession of this estate.”

Hux’s hands are so steady. “You could sell it. Go back.”

He flashes a frown. “I quite like the place, without my father in it. I missed the land, the privacy.” Ben can understand why a man like Hux— currently suturing his abdomen shut— is keen on privacy. He tugs the thread, and Ben feels it, like snagging his sleeve.

“I’m nearly certified as a Notfallsanitäter—” Hux volunteers— “paramedic, but the requirements are slightly different.”

Ben nods, impressed; he never even graduated high school. Hux snaps the thread, and strokes up and down Ben’s sides. “I’ll leave the epidermis open, let you bleed a little.”

“Thank you,” Ben mumbles. It’s late, but he’s jetlagged. He wonders if Hux is tired.

Hux’s hands stop at his waist. “Of course.”

Hux, with his blue eyes and smart haircut and perfect jaw— thank God he didn’t join the German military, because he looks like a Nazi propaganda poster— smiles at Ben, and he’d swear it seems loving. He tries to sit up on his elbows, but his abdominals are weak with the connective tissue cut, and Ben collapses back to the bed, grunting.

“It’s alright,” Hux soothes quickly, coming up to kiss him, “I’ve got you.”

Ben opens his mouth and lets Hux have his way, already breathing too fast. Hux disconnects, touches Ben’s forehead, holds his eye open. “… Hux?” he prompts, in a shaky, high register, because his low is wrecked from screaming.

Hux reaches back, presses two fingers into the pulse point at his wrist. Ben watches his Adam’s apple as he says, “You’re going into shock.” 

Ben blinks. He doesn’t  _ think _ he’s going into shock, but he’s not sure if he’d know. In the past few hours, however, he’s had an amputation and unanesthetized surgery, so he supposes it’s reasonable.

Hux is up, wadding the comforter at the end of the bed and lifting Ben’s feet onto it; his brain’s running too slowly to say much of anything until after it’s done— so his pants are down to his knees by the time he goes, “Um.”

“No tight clothing,” Hux fusses, folding the pants once they’re off. Ben doesn’t expect to ever be getting back into them. “It restricts blood flow… which doesn’t seem to be an issue.”

It takes Ben a moment too long to realize Hux has stopped speaking, and is, in fact, squinting at the tenting of his boxers. “Oh, yeah. That.”

Hux, at least, was taught it’s rude to stare. “Rapid breathing, tachycardia, dilated pupils…” He shakes his head, chuckles, and Ben doesn’t quite understand yet— but Hux is lying down next to him, and that’s all that really matters.


	11. Bloodbath

Hux’s hand is warm from the water he just washed it in, and Ben’s thankful, because the house doesn’t seem so insulated anymore Maybe that’s the blood loss. He’s shivering in a way that must be noticeable to Hux, with his head rested on Ben’s chest, picking a fleck of dried blood from the stitches. He parts the incision, coaxing it to ooze, languidly. Ben lost the towel for his stump hours ago; it’s almost entirely clotted, anyway. He’s a little disappointed. 

“I could draw a bath,” Hux offers, “keep you warm and bleeding?”

Hux twists to look over his shoulder at Ben, copper eyelashes flashing when he blinks, and Ben thinks if he’d had this a few years ago, he wouldn’t be here.

He wouldn’t have this if he weren’t here.

“Yes, please,” Ben says, before realizing that will involve Hux getting up.

Hux pecks him on the cheek— casual, like he’s just heading off to work— before rolling out of bed and heading into what is apparently not a closet, but an en suite. Ben listens to the water running, and fantasizes about how Hux is going to clean his skull.

“Ren.”

Ben’s eyes open, and take a moment to adjust in the dark. He thinks he must have fallen asleep, because he doesn't hear the water, and there’s music somewhere.

“Ren,” Hux prompts, gently, “come on.”

Hux takes his hand, and grasps the forearm of his residual limb, exerts all the effort to pull Ben to a sit. The nausea hits him suddenly; he turns a heave to a cough, though there’s nothing in his stomach but bile. Hux rubs his back, lets him lean into it while Ben catches his breath. He feels sick and unfit, and wants nothing more than to fall back asleep. Hopefully, he won’t wake up.

Hux is murmuring encouragements in two different languages, so Ben puts his hand on Hux’s shoulder, hooks the elbow of his less-helpful arm around the back of Hux’s neck, and drags himself up with the strength of his upper body. His abdominal muscles just don’t work.

He’s dizzy, knows he wouldn’t be upright if Hux weren’t holding him, backing them towards the bathroom.

“I’m sorry,” Ben chokes. Hux shushes him.

Somehow, he’s maneuvered to the edge of the tub, and sinks in with a grace which is definitely thanks to Hux. He huffs for a few moments, eyes pinched shut with the headache beating at his brain. He feels like dying, but it can wait.

Ben finally floats back to reality, where there’s candlelight, some soft song, warm water, and Hux, stroking through his hair. 

“You’ll be unconscious, soon,” Hux warns, swirling one finger in the water. “If there’s anything you want to say, Ren, do it now.”

He considers telling Hux he’s homeless. That they talked over the library computer— and he might worry about that, if he thought anyone would come looking (thinks of his parents’ faces, being told their long-lost son was cannibalized, and it’s hardly satisfying)— and he sent the plane ticket to a nightclub, because Ben could check the mail before anyone got there. Might put Hux’s mind at ease, find Ben some closure.

But none of it matters. He has Hux, until his last breath, and Hux has him, forever.

“My name’s Ben.”

Hux turns Ben’s head where it’s rested on the tile wall, to look him in the eyes. Even his hair’s back where it belongs. “I’m Armitage.”

If Ben’s diaphragm didn’t push against his stitches every time he breathed, he may have laughed. Luckily, he’s in too much pain to do much more than smile. “I like Hux better.”

He tucks Ben’s hair behind his ears and says, “So do I.”

“You know, Hux,” Ben says, “I don’t think I could have imagined this any better.”

Hux smiles, kisses his forehead, and Ben closes his eyes, because he wants that to be the last thing he sees. 

“Keep talking,” he requests, finally, “until I fall asleep?”

“Of course.” 

And he does. “You’re wonderful,” “you’re beautiful,” “you did so well,” and Ben’s itchy with the attention, but so are his sutures. At one point he thinks Hux is speaking German— either that or his brain’s dying before the rest of him— and then he’s humming a song Ben knows he’s heard a hundred times before, but not since he was a boy. 

The notes and the memories blur together with Hux’s touch, and Ben floats away on the bathwater.


	12. Decapitation

The morning sun streaks gold in Hux’s hair, and the cyan of the tile is nothing compared to his eyes. “Guten morgen, Ben.” 

Ben blinks slow, and somewhere deep in his throat, it sounds like he’s trying to make noise. Hux puts a hand to Ben’s stubbled cheek, and it’s not cold, for the leather. The button-down collar on Hux’s fresh shirt sits low enough that the bruise on his neck never slips from view.

“I was hoping you’d be dead by now,” he admits with a sweep of his thumb to Ben’s cheekbone. “I’m patient, but I’m not sure how long I can watch you suffer.”

Morning becomes afternoon, and the carnation bathwater turns red.

Hux is here— back, or still, it’s all too fuzzy— and he’s frowning. “I’m sorry, Ben,” he’s saying, and then it’s dark.

“You’re not going anywhere,” someone who is probably Hux is saying— or else God is German— “you’ll be here, with me.” He must be moving; the nausea is so intense. “I’ll put your skull on the shelf, where you wanted. Keep your hair on a keychain, so I can feel you with me. I’ll eat your heart on Valentine’s Day. I’ll have you for dinner  _ tonight— _ you’ll be part of me by tonight, Ben.”

The crinkle of the bed pad, beneath him. His hair, dusting the hardwood it drags over. Everything hurts, but it’s so dull. Like a punch in the gut, inside of a dream.

“Nothing can separate us, Ben. Nichts.” German, again. It sounds even more choked than usual.

Hardwood becomes concrete. They’ve stopped moving, but the dizziness remains. He’s on his back, and Hux kisses his cold lips before he turns the head away.

“There are rumours the brain can live up to seven seconds after beheading.”

A strip of cool metal settles on his neck.

Lifts away.

“… I’d like it to be true.”

Comes down in a single, clean,  _ chop. _

Hux appreciates the corpse. After all he’s drained, it somehow still has blood in it. He picks up the severed head, gingerly, still a picture of sleepy contentment and pain. He kisses the forehead, and cradles it to his chest.

“Oh, Ben…” Hux sighs, resting his cheek on the scalp. Blood pools on the concrete. “… I hope you can see this.”


End file.
